IFT to Host Wellness 12 at the Intercontinental Chicago O'Hare, March 28-29

CHICAGO, Jan. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- IFT will be hosting the fifth Wellness conference March 28th and 29th. The conference will offer attendees a unique blend of unbiased perspectives, news about emerging trends, and information on how organizations within the food industry are penetrating the health and wellness sector. Wellness 12 will offer professionals involved in developing, producing, and bringing healthy foods to market with a unique combination of the latest advances in the healthful foods arena and the practical knowledge to apply these advances to their own product development initiatives.

"Wellness is a MUST conference for anyone interested in learning more on the growth of better-for-you food products. This is an important conference where speakers and the audience get a chance to engage with each other on development of healthier foods and beverages and the market landscape," says IFT President Roger Clemens, DrPh.

The opening session titled Top 10 Functional Food Trends 2012 will cover the most important up-and-coming functional food trends for the next two years. This session will provide attendees with a preview of these trends and supporting data, including a detailed data deck that illustrates the cutting-edge market research that went into the development of the report. A. Elizabeth Sloan, Ph.D., President, Sloan Trends, Inc, and Contributing Editor, Food Technology will lead the session.

The conference will close with a session titled, What Consumers Around the World Will Want from Food Companies in 2020. A survey of consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Argentina and China finds that consumers will expect more from their food in 2020--food will have to satisfy taste, quality, price, and nutritional value expectations, plus provide health benefits and source or origin. This session will explore these findings in detail, define the relationships between policy and values-based pressures on multinational food companies, and offer potential next steps for food companies. Linda Eatherton, Partner and Director, Global Food & Nutrition Practice, Ketchum and Christopher Wyse, M.S., Vice President of Communications, PepsiCo Americas Foods will lead the session.

About IFTThe Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is a nonprofit scientific society. Our individual members are professionals engaged in food science, food technology, and related professions in industry, academia, and government. IFT's mission is to advance the science of food, and our long-range vision is to ensure a safe and abundant food supply, contributing to healthier people everywhere.

For more than 70 years, the IFT has been unlocking the potential of the food science community by creating a dynamic global forum where members from more than 100 countries can share, learn, and grow. We champion the use of sound science across the food value chain through the exchange of knowledge, by providing education, and by furthering the advancement of the profession. IFT has offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit ift.org.